Welcome to Quantexa 2.3 | 2.3.0 Release Announcement
In Quantexa 2.3, you will find: Entity Store, a new component in our set of Entity Resolution capabilities; Introduction of Security Model V2, a new way to manage Role-Based Access and Control within The Quantexa Platform; Enhancements to Assess including Path Ranking, a new way to define paths; Support for Elasticsearch 8 and Spark 3.2. Entity Store In 2.3.0, we are introducing Entity Store in beta. Before 2.3.0, all interactions with the Quantexa UI and the Quantexa Mid-tier APIs depended upon resolving Entities on-the-fly (dynamically). The Entity Store allows a persisted or materialized view of Entities to be stored in the system. In this first release, the core Entity Store will load a full set of pre-resolved Entities produced by Batch Resolver, into Elasticsearch. The Entity Store can then be used by Explorer to enable querying of the underlying entities, as a Cache for Resolver to improve performance, and to support the new Entity REST API. Security Model V2 We have introduced a new framework for authentication and authorization across the platform. This gives the platform greater control over the data and features that a user can access and enables easier integration with Identity Providers (IdPs). End-users no longer need to interact directly with low-level Quantexa Roles. They are now able to share their work with Groups that are logical to their organizational structure. For example: UK Fraud Investigators. Using a new User Management Screen, you can now provision users and Groups, collections of users that can be assigned Roles and Dynamic Privileges, to The Quantexa Platform from Identity Providers simply and easily. Path Ranking It is now possible to specify the rules for defining the relative importance of paths, a chain of Documents and Entities that connect two Nodes, when writing Network Scores with Path Ranking, which make the Network easier to analyze by signaling the most significant areas to explore further. Dual Context Sources Dual Context Sources enable scoring logic to be designed that will work in both batch and dynamic, and provides a config-based tool that generates Source steps for both pipelines. This simplifies the deployment of a build with a dual architecture. Support for Elasticsearch and Spark Quantexa now supports Elasticsearch 8 across the platform, except for Offline Indexers and Spark 3.2 is now supported across the platform. Warning: Spark 3.0 is deprecated and support will be removed completely in the next release of the platform. Spring Boot upgrade Spring Boot has been upgraded to version 2.6.8. This results in faster startup times and solves a number of security vulnerabilities found in older versions of Spring Boot. Documentation Site Glossary We have completely revamped and reworked our Documentation site glossary, adding almost 100 new terms. Explore the Glossary to find out more. Other highlights For more control and flexibility when running ETL, Quantexa has has added the ability to generate Resolver Search Loader and Compound Creator scripts at the point where users define a Root Model in Data Fusion. List inputs have been introduced for Entity Attribute functions, to allow for more flexibility and customizability, granting users more ways to define Entity Attributes in Data Fusion, and cater to a wider range of data models. You are now able to collapse the Query Builder in Explorer. This is the next step in improving the user experience of Explorer, allowing users to focus on the results of the query. You will find the full set of Release Notes on the Quantexa Documentation site. If you are unable to access them, you will need to get a user with access to submit a Documentation site access request through the Quantexa Support Portal.Welcome to Quantexa 2.2 | 2.2.0 Release Announcement
Welcome to Quantexa 2.2, your second major update to Quantexa 2. The highlights in this release are: Visualize geospatial path data in the Investigation Map View; New Data Viewer features; Improvements to the Investigations Timeline; A new tool, Assess Accelerate, to generate Scala code templates for Scoring. Geospatial Path Visualization You can now visualize paths over a time period in Investigation Map View, giving investigators additional context for geospatial data. Explore Geospatial Path Visualization Data Viewer Data Viewer is now more consistent with Transaction Viewer, as well as bringing in many features from Explorer directly into Investigations, including more filters, aggregations, and different types of Documents. New functionality includes: Refine filters, add a combination of filters from the Results table in the Data Viewer; A new feature enabling users to filter the Data Viewer from the Scoring Panel; Support for Significant and Shared Counterparties functionality, and graphical filtering. Explore Data Viewer Improvements to the Investigations Timeline The Timeline in Investigations has been re-designed with you in mind, giving more detailed control of timeframes and empowering you to investigate their data in a way that suits you. Explore the Investigations Timeline Assess Accelerate A new configuration-driven tool, Assess Accelerate, has been created to enable users to quickly get started with Scoring using Assess. This tool is integrated with the Repository Tool and allows you to generate code at the beginning of your Scoring setup. Explore Assess Accelerate Read the full release notes our Documentation site. You'll need to log in to access the site. Submit an access request to our support team.
Entity Resolution tooling and best practices
Entity Resolution (ER) has always been the heart of any Quantexa solution and plays a significant role in the successful outcomes delivered. As we continue to improve this capability, we are working to make Entity Resolution clearer and lower the barrier to entry for all users. We are happy to announce we’re introducing new and improved documentation, focusing on how to understand your Entity quality and leverage new Entity Resolution tooling through best practices and guides. Why Entity quality? Understanding and assessing the quality of Entities within any solution is often complex as it requires specialized skills, knowledge and resources such as: the ability to write Scala queries, knowledge of the batch build output, time as investigations and queries often have long elapsed times, expertise in understanding and interpreting the results as well as recommend resolutions. This means that quality assessment historically could only be carried out by those with the required technical expertise, which could lead to investigations taking longer than necessary. What’s new? An earlier release of the Statistical Profile Testing (SPT) framework and the Bad Entity Analyzer (BAE) reduced the requirement level for both writing Scala and knowledge of the batch output. Although having these tools made assessing Entity quality much easier, we discovered a way to streamline the process even more. In the Quantexa 2.4 release, we integrated the Entity Explorer and Entity Quality Score into the Entity Resolution capability, making the visibility and overall understanding of the Entity quality a focus. You said; we did Whilst the introduction of new tooling is key, based on your feedback we've also identified the need for better documentation on Entity Resolution best practices, specifically on how to get the most of the features associated with tuning and analyzing Entity Resolution. We are pleased to say we have created a whole new Entity Resolution tuning best practice space within Quantexa Documentation in the Quantexa 2.4 release section. The new section will help offer advice and guidance through the process to help understand: Why is it important to validate an Entity Resolution run? What are the signs of poorly resolved Entities? How do I use Quantexa tooling to simplify ER tuning? The documentation contains dummy examples of how to use the Entity Quality Scoring, Entity Explorer and Entity Lab to find, understand and propose suggestions on how to fix some common issues discovered. Watch out for future documentation on additional tooling and guidance around Entity Resolution processes as the site updates alongside Quantexa releases. Additional Resources For more information on Entity Resolution check out our blog on Using base Entity Resolution configuration for the first time. Whilst Quantexa's standard Compounds will support most use cases, there are situations where specific Compounds will be needed. See our article What Makes a Good Compound giving guidance and considerations to help with Compound creation. Entity Resolution (ER) and good Entity quality underpins all Quantexa deployments. Therefore, we recommend that Entity Resolution is monitored and reviewed through all stages of development. Our Entity Resolution general playbook describes the best practice process for monitoring and reviewing Entity Resolution within Quantexa.
Project Documentation to support you in upgrading Quantexa
One of Quantexa's priorities is to unlock the potential of your data while enabling customers to form their own self sufficient decision intelligence capability. Our Documentation team has outlined the requirements for upgrades, allowing you to prioritise needs against business benefit. This allows customers to assess through the following lenses: Which functionality update would help bring value to your organisation? Can additional functionality unlock other opportunities for Decision Intelligence in your organisation Are there any further technical or architectural requirements to consider when planning functional upgrades? How will these upgrades help with your end-user experience, or; Further the technical improvements of the platform? Where can you find this information? 📚️ As the Quantexa Releases are announced, the Documentation site explains the functional and non-functional updates, how they work, and how to implement the upgrades. As a Quantexa customer or partner, you will be able to access information around best practices to follow when upgrading your version of the Quantexa Platform on our Documentation site. In this section you will find guidance around Performing upgrades, Maintaining upgradable Quantexa implementations and Ongoing development during upgrades. Additionally, you can stay updated with the latest releases by subscribing to Release Announcements or reach out to your TAP (formerly CSMs & SSMs) to set up a meeting with the required team members. Quantexa can demonstrate the functional updates and discuss the benefits and effort requirements in order to help you plan out your platform roadmap, for your current needs or those you may have in the future. We are here to support you in any way you need. Additional resources For more information check out our blog: So you want to perform an upgrade? 💬 Do you have any questions or thoughts around scaling/upgrades that you would like to discuss with other Quantexa customers and experts? Ask your question in Quantexa Platform Support.
